Bio

While studying as a classical guitar major at Montgomery College, I was approached by Pete Moffett, drummer with such notable bands as Government Issue and Wool, with an offer to play bass in his "punk" band. I somehow made the cut and was soon playing with his band Dove in many of DC's dives and just plain "spaces" that would permit loud music and youth. As many bands do, Dove disbanded and I found myself playing bass in another DC based group, Scream, fronted by Pete Stahl with his brother Franz on guitar and a seventeen year old Dave Grohl on drums.

Scream had an on/off relationship with their former bass player, Skeeter, who would leave the band for various reasons usually involving money or drugs. Fortunately, for me, his leaving came at a time when I desperately wanted to leave town and the band was about to go on the road. After playing several shows in the DC area, we started touring across the South toward California. I remember several shows being cancelled and others not particularly well attended, but we were, for the most part, enjoying ourselves. I soon found out, however, that Pete the singer, who also was my landlord at the time, had not been completely forthcoming about the rent so he could ensure he would get more and pay less. This, coupled with the fact that we were having less fun onstage every night, created and undercurrent of dissent.

When the band arrived in Hollywood, CA, I got a phone call on a payphone at a show from a guitarist whom I had met in Maryland approximately two years prior. He was involved with a project which was being produced by Rick Rubin and was wondering if I was happy in my current musical endeavor. I would need to decide soon, which meant leaving Scream in the middle of a tour. Deciding whether to join a band already on a major label, being produced by one of the most successful producers at the time or stay in a struggling DC punk band with a singer who was ripping me off wasn't too difficult.

Fortunately, they didn't destroy all of my equipment. I soon found myself in Hollywood, working with the Four Horsemen, an AC/DC based Southern Rock flavored amalgamation which turned out to be the brainchild of a fellow who called himself Haggis and had met Rick Rubin while playing bass for The Cult on their "Electric" album. He had, somehow, con- vinced Rick that he could start a great American band that would rock so hard we wouldn't know what to do with all the money we made.

After three years, we finally had a cd out and were touring in support of it. We went out with our label mates, The Black Crowes, who seemed perplexed by our having a tour bus when they had to start out in vans. This, of course, came to an end when we came to the end of our merchandising and other advances which, naturally, we couldn't recoup in such a short amount of time...Long story short: the band broke up.


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Performances

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Rants

Scott McClellan should play the role Ned Beatty played in the remake of "Deliverance".

Anyone who feels the US's presence in Iraq is justified should stop complaining about
those of us who don't, pick up a gun, get over there and risk getting their asses blown
to hell like our poor soldiers and National Guard who have to compete with mercenaries
who probably get paid a lot more than they for doing the same job.

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Current projects

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How to reach me

ben@lizardpants.com
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